when i startedorking with gullah geechee and promoting, preservingt i said i want it to be taught like any other language. um-hum. i want to be so fluent in gullah that flish is my second language, yeah. you got to think in gullah and translate it back. wouldn t that be beautiful. yeah. i love my culture. i can tell. i love it. i can tell. what was live like growing up here. it was different because my father is white and my father is full gullah. my mother and father had children from previous marriages and got together created us and we had 14 growing up. you have the full rainbow coalition. we do we work throughout the corridor promoting and prevc the culture. economic sustain ability. help people with land issues. heirs, property all of the things that are the issue of any
while the gullah culture can be found in georgia and the lowcountry of south carolina, st. helena island is known as the center for the gullah culture and language. and for some the heart, soul and sound are the renowned giannecchini gullah ring shouters. get ready. . the ring shout is a religious ritual of song and dance that can be traced back to west africa and believed to be the oldest surviving african tradition in north america. [ chanting ]. they asked me to meet them in here in front of the praise houses. after had a hard day of working for free black folks would gather here to hang out, get their groove on and of course praise jesus.
not oem a part of gullah culture but it s essential and underexplored part of american history. see it s more than 90% likely that every african-american has at least one relative who handed here. while that fact fills me with awe i m disgusted by the fact that the people were brought here in the first place. the other thing i knew about this area of the country is the gullah are holding onto culture here. it s a powerful cultural phenomenon. my great great grandfather was a gullah statementsman i m a great great grandson of a gullah statesman. he was enslaved, born in buford about an hour and a half south of here worked on a boat called the planter. to make a long story short on the morning of may 13th, 1862 he saw the opportunity to seize freedom. he got his crew, their families, and took off right for ft.
festival to celebrate gullah culture. food, music and pint size power rangers. and free candy. can t miss out on the sucker. my god getting us ready. i ve never felt so funky being judged a sinner. love, peace, happiness. family. unity. we love each other. there goes my president, patrick, blowing kisses, preaching unity and happiness and looks good in sunglasses. bye, my president. i m happy to see happy black people what are we celebrating. celebrating family, community, heritage, that s what we come back home for. with everything going on in the world and all the problems and divisions, this is good out here outside, people having a
and divisions this is good to be out here, outside. people having a good time, right. yeah. and if you notice it s diverse, not just black people but everybody comes around. yeah, yeah. we celebrate everybody. i ve seen like three white people. [ laughter ] you see more than that. you see more white guys. i brought the other one. you brought two of them. those all my whites. so how would you say that the gullah culture is different than black culture in the rest of the country? oh it s very different. yeah. you say that like i don t have enough time to go into it. pull up a chair, sit down. it s not just the language but the food, mannerism. the customs. things that you dope realize that you do as part of the gullah culture, when you go somewhere else, yeah, i don t get it.